


kiss him once for somebody's sake

by pyotr



Category: The CiviliTy of Albert Cashier - Stevens & Wooden/Deratany
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, also there's handjobs, billy lives!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 02:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: “look at you,” jeff says as he leans on the cart, and he can’t help the grin on his face or the way it winds through his words, “all grown up. ever get those few inches you were hopin’ for, billy?”





	kiss him once for somebody's sake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HaveYouSeenATimeLord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaveYouSeenATimeLord/gifts).



> title is from the song "somebody's darling", but not the snippet in the show. 
> 
> this is a christmas gift for jenna (possumbuddies on tumblr)!!! their discord name for a while was "jeff/billy smut hashtag".

there are no casualty rolls in camp.

many things happen all at once. there are bullets flying around their heads, ducked low as they charge with the flank. the hot mississippi sun beats down on their backs and he can feel sweat beading along his spine; there’s a sharp cry from somewhere behind him, billy, and the three of them- him and albert and walter- stumble and wheel around as one.

he moves as if in a haze, tying the linen bandages with shaking hands tight above billy’s knee; he tries not to look too close, tries not to see the grotesque bend of his shin and the white gleam of shattered bone. walter waves for a stretcher, ducking under fire, and there’s something frenzied in his face as albert pulls the two of them away.

and then walter is dead, and albert is gone, too. jeff lingers in camp for two days after the battle, hopeful; there are no casualty rolls in camp, no lists of the dead or wounded or missing. he wouldn’t read them even if there were. 

walter is dead. billy  _must_ be dead. albert was missing, but he comes back, something harder in him, something angry. jeffrey carries their names with him for the rest of the war and the long march and train ride home, held close to his heart, and when he shows up at home without so much as a by-your-leave, his mother cries and kisses him, and his sisters all cry, and nate cries because everyone else is crying, and his father pulls him into a tight, tight hug and doesn’t let go for a long time.

“we were worried, y’know,” his mother chatters on that night over dinner, all relieved, nervous energy, and jeff takes comfort in it; he had missed the warm coziness of home, of being surrounded by his family. “that middleton boy came home missing a leg and you know, he was part of the same company, wasn’t he? yours? well, he didn’t say much when he came back north, but we weren’t the only ones asking, either.”

“middleton?” jeff asks with a lurch, mid-chew. frances frowns at him and he swallows quickly- nearly choking- before continuing. “billy middleton? he’s alive?”

“far as we know,” his father finally speaks up, sounding wry as he tears apart a piece of bread to dip in the stew. “he don’t come to town much, but who can blame him? hoppin’ ‘round all one-legged, i’d be 'shamed, too.”

“dad,” jeff says, mirroring his mother’s disapproving frown, and lawrence sighs and waves them both off.

“oh, y’know what i mean. jus’ that he’s keepin’ to himself, is all. all’ve ‘em are.”

he lets it lie, after that, doesn’t push anymore for the rest of dinner or the evening afterward. his mother puts him up with nate- the girls are all sharing a room already, a charlie at least chafes at it, and nate’s nursery had been jeff’s old room anyway. he appreciates it; after three years, it would be nigh on impossible to sleep in a room alone, even if his five year old brother’s quiet breaths are a poor substitute for an entire camp of restless men. 

it’s strange. he’d just left the war and a part of him is still there, marching and eating shit food and watching people die, but it still feels so, so distant. he had thought for the longest time that billy was dead, passed from shock or blood loss or infection, broken body strewn across the field at vicksburg same as so many others, but —

well. others had made it back home, too, but none that he’d been as close with as he had billy. 

but jeff is smart, he thinks, in his own way. he doesn’t go chasing after ghosts. he waits for them to come to him.

and waits, and waits. he knows, vaguely, where the middletons live, an hour south of town by carriage, faster by horse. he doesn’t know what he’ll  _do_ when he sees billy again, just that he knows it will eventually happen; oddly enough, it’s that very sense of uncertainty that settles him. 

he sees billy for the first time in nearly three years the spring of 1866. 

jeff almost doesn’t recognize him, at first; at a glance he looks vastly different from the sixteen year old he’d laughed and drank and fought with. the roundness of boyhood is almost gone from billy’s face, his shoulders just a bit broader, his hair shorter but still curly. but there’s something in his eyes, too, older than they should be, and jeff aches. at nineteen, he’d felt barely more than a boy- billy seemed far older than that.

he’d ridden into town on an empty cart with a man who must have been one of his brothers- he had three, jeff remembers the way billy had talked about his family during the war, wistful- and he stays seated when his brother hops to the ground and goes inside the general store. jeff had come with charlie, but she’d slipped off as soon as she was able, and jeff didn’t mind; charlie, at sixteen, had already proven herself ferociously independent.

jeff had waited, hadn’t gone chasing ghosts just like he’d promised, but he’d never been patient. he itched with anticipation, and billy was  _here,_ just a few yards away, and something in him ached just looking at him. 

“look at you,” jeff says as he leans on the cart, and he can’t help the grin on his face or the way it winds through his words, “all grown up. ever get those few inches you were hopin’ for, billy?”

billy jumps like he hadn’t noticed that jeff was there, and he’d seemed so distracted that jeff could believe it. but he swipes at him like nothing had changed, like three years hadn’t passed between them, like they were still friends, and jeff laughs as he ducks out of reach.

“more like a foot taken off,” is what billy says, and there’s a beat of silence between them. and then jeff cracks a smile, and billy grins back, and it really is a funny joke in the sad, macabre sort of way that jeff had gotten used to while surrounded by other soldiers. 

“no one else thinks it’s funny,” billy tells him after a pause, his tone pitched low as if in confidence. there’s a thump, then, of something heavy being tossed into the cart, and someone climbs up on the other side of the bench a moment later. the man must have been billy’s brother- there was a passing resemblance in the curly hair, in the line of his jaw, the shape of his eyes- but he was more world worn, his face tired.

“friend of yours?” he asks, eyes flicking briefly over jeff; he sounds disinterested.

“from the war,” billy agrees, and something in his brother’s face hardens.

jeff starts coming around after that, making the hour trek to the tiny middleton farm late sunday morning every week, when everyone else was attending church. jeff believed, in his own way, but it was hard to worship a benevolent god after all he’d seen and all he’d done.

they sit together one such day, working through the process of canning raspberries that mrs. middleton had left for them. it was good work, steady work, and if they occasionally ate a few here and there, well. who would tell? billy fidgeted, seemed distracted and restless with his fingers tapping against the tabletop, his eyes skittering right over jeff’s face.

“it’s nice, y’know?” he says finally, sorting through the raspberries with sticky fingers, his head bent. jeff can’t see his expression, but that’s okay; billy never was all that good at hiding what he was feeling. it was there in his voice, in the set of his shoulders- he wore them like a coat. “to talk ’bout the war. no one here wants to listen; i could go on an’ on ‘til i’m blue in the face, an’ they’d all jus’ act like i ain’t said nothin’.”

the confession feels like something secret, and it curls warm and sweet between his ribs. jeff opens his mouth, begins to speak  —

and billy leans over and kisses him.

in practice it is nothing special, clumsy, a firm press of lips. and it’s brief, too, barely a few heartbeats long. then billy is leaning back in his chair (the old wood creaks distressingly beneath his shifting weight) and goes back to idly picking through the berries, seeming as if nothing had happened at all. how strange, that he should be able to act so- and how strange that jeffrey, floundering, finds himself following.

but later that night, curled in bed and listening to nate’s quiet breaths, he touches his lips and thinks he tastes raspberries.

they carry on like that through the summer, stolen kisses and exploratory touches. it’s like something out of the novels that his sisters would eat up: a sweet summer romance, and in the story the heroine would realize the depths of her feelings in the dog days. jeff was sure that he didn’t love billy, not in the way that mattered, but knew that given time he could grow to do so. 

still, the possibility was there, sweet on the tip of his tongue, and not entirely unenticing. 

it is mid-august and the heat drives them both to distraction, snappish. eventually, jeff begs his father use of a mule and cart, swearing up and down that he’ll return in a day and a half, two at the latest. and so they escape town and flee a few miles to the river, throwing blankets down on the grass and calling it a camp.

the two of them sit side by side on the riverbank with their trousers rolled up, feet plunged in the cool water. this time it is jeffrey who moves first, bending to kiss billy, a chaste little peck at the corner of his mouth. there’s a moment, a stretch of time that feels impossibly long where the two of them seem suspended, and something twists in jeff’s gut, thinks,  _did i do something wrong?_

and then billy shifts to make the angle less awkward, his hand curling in jeff’s shirt, and he’s smiling too, his lopsided, boyish grin. 

they kiss again and it’s better this time, more coordinated, jeff’s hands framing billy’s face in some impossibly tender sentiment, billy’s hand curled tight into jeff’s shirt as if to keep him from leaving. it’s nice, to be able to take their time, for once; their kisses are slow and exploratory, just this side of sloppy, but they were  _comfortable._

it was strange, though, jeff having to be the responsible one; there had always been others to take over that role, walter or later albert, but now there was no one except billy and billy seemed more than happy to melt into him, pressing close. and yes, it was nice,  _very_ nice to just be close to another person like this, but something chills in him when he feels billy tugging his shirt from where it’s tucked into his trousers.

too fast, he curls his fingers around billy’s wrist, and the two of them stay there like that for a moment, frozen, breathing hard and just  _staring._ and jeff can’t help but think, distantly, about the faint dusting of freckles across billy’s face, how the setting sun turned his skin a soft gold.

“you okay?” billy asks him, sounding just a bit breathless, breaking the illusion.  he is still very, very close, the both of them still leaning toward each other, and jeff swallows thickly and nods.

“yeah,” he says, his voice cracking. he clears his throat and tries again. “yeah, i’m- i’m fine. jus’... nervous, y’know? i’m-”

“always nervous,” billy finishes, rolling his eyes and leaning back on his elbows. he kicks his foot in the water, splashing idly.

“sure,” is jeff’s reply, and their quiet again, looking out over the river. he can’t help stealing glances, though; the years had changed them both, in more than just the obvious. billy was short a leg and jeff may as well have been, with how his limp has worsened through the war. and they were both sedate, now- not settled by any stretch of the definition, but less hungry, less desperate.

they bump knees, then, something secret between the two of them, an apology or an acceptance or both. he had been nervous was all, is what jeff tells himself, fiercely. before billy he’d not kissed anyone since albert, hadn’t even thought about it. hadn’t had reason to, really; it was an unpleasant memory, and billy was  _here_ , warm and friendly, and he made something twist in jeff’s chest even as he laughed. 

jeff leans in again, rocking forward onto his knees, and this time billy kisses him like he’d been expecting it, one hand curling over the nape of jeff’s neck. it’s a lovely kiss, as far as kisses go, slow and unhurried, though neither of them are particularly graceful- they bump teeth, noses wedged uncomfortably against the other’s cheek, kisses cut short for smiling.

he finds himself moving to straddle billy’s thighs and this time he doesn’t flinch when a hand snakes up beneath his shirt, fingers pressing against his ribs. it makes his breath catch, and he can feel billy’s snort of laughter before he can hear it; his hand settles on jeff’s hip, stroking almost absentmindedly, and jeff feels as if something has lodged in his throat.

“cold feet?” he can feel billy’s mouth dragging over his throat, just barely moving with the mumbled words. he curls his fingers into the curly hair at the nape of billy’s neck, and tugs just hard enough to be teasing.

still, the soft intake of breath that he feels against his skin is gratifying.

“not on your life,” is jeff’s reply, but he’s breathless with it, rocking back just slightly to scrabble at the buttons of his trousers to hide the way his hands shake. they’re not experienced, either of them; jeff has certainly never been...  _intimate,_ and he’s sure that billy hasn’t either, with the way that he kisses.

billy is watching him with wide eyes as he rolls over to shimmy out of his trousers, his parted lips kiss-swollen and red, before he leans over to catch one of jeff’s hands, his nose scrunched with discomfort. “on the sand, jeff?”

“ain’t you a man, billy middleton?” jeff teases, but he hobbles to his feet anyway, taking billy’s extended hand and pulling him up, as well. they would have made a sight, had anyone been around to see them: two men, one a one-legged cripple and the other halfway to dropping trou. “afraid’ve a little dirt?”

“afraid’ve where it’ll end up, more like.” they’ve two and a half legs between them, stumbling over to the blanket that had been spread out across the grass earlier, tumbling bonelessly. they laugh, the both of them, and something warm coils in jeff’s stomach, something pleasant and nameless, sprawled there across the blanket on the ground. 

billy hooks his fingers into the collar of jeff’s shirt and pulls him closer and then they’re kissing again, sweetly, and jeff’s hand settles easily just above billy’s hip as billy’s creeps up to cup his jaw. his fingers press too hard, too urgent- billy had always been impatient, fidgeting, unable to sit still- and jeff drags his fingers lightly across his ribs, swallowing the soft little gasp that follows.

they’re both inexperienced, unsure and fumbling, jeff’s trousers undone and billy rubbing against his thigh. they’ve never gone this far, before, always just kisses, usually chaste, as if they were afraid of pushing into anything more, as if that would change anything between them. and it might have- jeff didn’t  _love_ billy, he didn’t think, and though in this moment he most definitely  _wanted_ him, it wasn’t worth losing his friendship. 

“you’re, uh, _”_ billy says suddenly, cupping jeff’s cock through his drawers, his hand still and awkward as if he weren’t quite sure how it got there, “ _hard.”_

and  _lord,_ jeff can’t help the laugh that bubbles out his mouth, over his own nerves and embarrassment. billy makes an offended sort of sound and presses with the heel of his hand, grinding just this side of painful, and jeff’s laughter cuts off in a sort of gurgle, his hips bucking slightly of their own volition. he tightens his grip on billy, nails digging into skin, and drinks in the quiet hiss he gets in response.

then- they just stare at each other, for a moment, unsure and balancing on a knife’s edge. jeff asks, “okay?” and billy replies, “okay.” and that’s that.

jeff works on kicking his trousers the rest of the way off as billy sits up and scrambles at his own buttons, the both of them stealing embarrassed, furtive glances as they undress. billy deftly pulls his shirt up over his head while he’s at it; jeff doesn’t bother, knowing that he’ll just get tangled in his haste, though he feels it sticking to his back with sweat.

there’s another moment, an awkward pause where words seem out of place; they’ve seen each other sans clothing before, of course, as there was little privacy in the army and bathing in groups was the norm. but it had been differentthen, jeff hadn’t wanted him then, hadn’t looked at billy and seen something desirable. 

now, though —

“oh, for chrissake,” he sighs in something like annoyance, and he leans forward to put a hand on the back of billy’s neck to pull him in for another chaste, closed-mouthed kiss, abruptly feeling all the tension seep from the stiff line of his shoulders.

jeff wouldn’t call it sex, exactly- it was too stilted for such a heavy word, as if it didn’t deserve it- rather, just two friends, enjoying each other’s company. all that  _he’d_ heard of sex was slick, sweaty passion, an art, something magnificent and wonderful that lasted for hours, and all that rot.

(but what he’d heard had always been soldiers’ gossip, after all.)

the sweat is there, perhaps the passion, and it was good enough, he supposed. but the sweat was from the hot august sun and the passion was more a general desperation, he supposed. after much fumbling (and jeff’s stuttered apologies and billy’s nervous titters) they’d decided that the easiest thing, for now, was to stay with the familiar.

billy finishes first, rutting into jeff’s hand and pressing his face against his shoulder. his fingers loosen around jeff’s cock, slick with spit and precum, still as he shudders through it; jeff tries very, very hard not to move, though he’s sure he near shakes with the effort of it. after a few moments billy’s grip tightens and he continues with clumsy, unsteady strokes, and jeff can’t help the soft noise that he makes.

release, when it comes, is underwhelming, a warm, breathless feeling that unfurls in his gut and leaves his heart beating fast. he can feel billy breathing, hot, damp puffs of air against his collarbone. all at once he’s suddenly aware of where their bodies press together and the discomfort of his shirt sticking to his skin with sweat.

billy makes a disgruntled noise when jeff starts to squirm, sandwiched uncomfortably between him and the blanket, and jabs jeff hard in the ribs, hard enough to make him suck in a sharp breath between his teeth.

“really?” jeff demands after he’s rolled away, shirt stripped but drawers tugged back on. the blanket was a mess, one he’d had to wash on his one or give up for dust, but billy lounged like a cat in the sun, laying on his stomach bare as the day he was born. “we got a  _connection,_ middleton, don’t go abusin’ my tender trust, now.”

“y’say that like some faintin’ lady,” billy says, and there’s laughter in his voice, on his face; jeff’s annoyance fades immediately. “‘sides, davis, thought you were gonna be a cuddler. sure was all that time down south, or was that somethin’ different?”

 _you know damn well it was_ rests on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t say it because that would be rising to billy’s bait, drawn into bickering like they always were. instead, he scoots closer and eases down to lie on his back, studiously ignoring the wet patch of blanket right between his shoulders.

instead, he takes billy’s hand, and thinks of raspberries.


End file.
